I've come to believe that my purpose in life is transporting ants and spiders from one place to another. The ants prefer to travel by shirt. The elites like the view from my neck. The spiders, adventurous risk-takers, prefer traveling by automobile. They cling to both my side mirrors on tiny strands of broken webs. If I could read their tiny lips, I'm sure they are shouting "woo-hoo" into the wind.
Speaking of downers, there are few things more anxiety producing than turning on your parental baby monitor and hearing your maternal parental unit (Mom) yelling "Help. Somebody help me."
I always turn on the baby monitor before I get to her window so the device has time to link to the monitor in her room. I never know what I will hear when I turn on the monitor. Sometimes she's not back from dinner yet, so I pace and mill around on the sidewalk, staring at my decrepit reflection in her window. Sometimes she's already prone on the couch. Sometimes she wakes, sometimes she doesn't.
Hearing her yell for help really gets the heart rate up. Mine, I mean. I'm programmed to jump when my mother yells but there's nowhere to jump when I'm on the outside of the window looking in.
I pressed the button on the monitor and yelled back, "Someone will be here in just a minute!" Then I set the monitor on the clattering air conditioning unit and frantically texted the Med-Aide Mom needs help.
"Help! Somebody!" Mom kept shouting. She forgets she has a button on a necklace around her neck. She doesn't realize that catching the attention of an aide passing along her open door at just the right moment is a long shot akin to winning a $1,000 lottery scratcher. Leaning into the window screen, I could make out Mom's blurry figure sitting on the toilet in the dark. I'm pretty sure what I would have seen if the light had been on: Mom staring at a big mess wondering what to do next.
This all happened a couple weeks ago. Tonight the problem was her hearing aids.
"These things are falling out," she complained, pointing to her ears. I wanted her to get up and come to the window so I could see if they were in wrong, but what would I do then? She probably wouldn't be able to figure it out. Luckily an aide was passing along the hallway. A tall blonde woman in flowered scrubs and a face mask came into Mom's room.
"Will you see if her hearing aids are in right?" I asked through the baby monitor.
"I'll get someone who knows how they work," she said and went out the door.
"Go get someone who knows what they are doing," Mom said, smoothing her blue and white plaid wool blanket.
We waited.
In a minute, another aide, Anne, came in. She peered at Mom's ears.
"The red goes on the right and the blue goes on the left," I said helpfully.
Anne took them both out of Mom's ears and studied them in the lamplight. She switched them and put them into the proper ears.
"Can you hear me now?" I said into the monitor.
"Can you hear me now?" Mom echoed. I gave Anne a thumbs up. She went out the door. I assumed she was smiling but who knows. My mask certainly hides a multitude of smirks and thinned lips.
"Mom, do you want to move to a smaller place?" I asked Mom.
"Should we move to a smaller place?" she said.
"Better food, more outdoors?"
"Are we going to move me tomorrow?"
"No, not that fast. We'll let you know. We'll take care of everything, don't worry," I said, thinking I'll do enough worrying for both of us.
"I won't worry," she said. She looked down at her blanket and pulled it across her lap. "It's time to put this thing into orbit."
"Yes," I agreed. "Put that thing into orbit."
She laid down on the couch and pulled the blanket across her stomach. She gave me a peace sign. I gave it back and sang Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you tomorrow. When I have the button pressed, I can't hear her but I saw her lips moving so I knew she was singing along.
